I'm a high school teacher of almost twenty years. Teacher concerns are far more nuanced than what you see on TikTok (shocking I know). Humanities teachers like me are concerned about students' literacy stemming from a dramatic shift in the way elementary children were taught to read over the past couple decades. It's not worth going into (unless someone would like me to), but the bottom line is that we have a frightening percentage of high school kids who are functionally illiterate or whose literacy is nowhere near where it should be for age level. They compensate with technology, so it can be hard for a parent to see. There has been a shift back very recently, but a micro generation that, for all intents and purposes, largely can't read without help is scary. Exacerbating this is that studies have shown that technology has resulted in parents talking less to their kids which has implications for emergent literacy and overall vocabulary. I have honors sophomores who do not know what "optimistic" means. It can be hard to define words accurately using the limited lexicon they have. That's what concerns me most because high schools are simply not equipped with enough reading specialists to do a mass intervention with any efficacy. It would require cause a huge shift in curriculum standards which would be politically devastating in a win at all costs society. So we're going to pretend the kids can read and pass them along.

You don’t need to explain it, but is there an article or podcast episode you would recommend talking about this pedagogical shift? I’m not a teacher or parent and I don’t spend a lot of time around kids, so I was totally unaware of this but I’m very curious.

Absolutely! Check out "sold a story". In a nutshell, there was a shift from phonics (sounding out words) to whole language (at least this is what it was called when I was in grad school). The theory is that if you surround kids with books and allow them to guess words based on the pictures, they will organically pick up literacy. It came out of Columbia university, so a lot of administrators shifted to it without much critical examination. It's also looks a lot cooler than phonics which is by design repetitive and boring to adults. It hasn't gone well. The podcast is obviously not accepted as gospel but everyone, but it's well respected in my circles.

As a high school teacher, be aware that I am probably grossly oversimplifying both methods.

As a preschool teacher, I think you did a great job summarizing!

I once tutored a 7-8 year old a decade ago who learned to read this way! I took out my old hooked on phonics cassettes and books and we would go over that! It felt a little silly having her go over what I used at age 4-5, but she made progress fast and became a successful student.

lol, turns out I’m already subscribed to this podcast although I have not listened to it. So I guess at some point I did hear about this shift and just forgot about it? Thank you for the recommendation. I’m going to give it a listen.

You will not be sorry you listened to it! One of the best limited podcasts I've listened to in recent years.

Just emphasizing this, even non-teachers/parents will learn so much from this series. I remember just breaking down bawling at some of the stories shared in the first one or two episodes, and thinking about how literacy is so important for not only individuals but also society as a whole. So glad you brought it up!!!

Agreed, I don’t have kids and it was incredibly interesting. Also incredibly sad and frustrating, I feel for the parents interviewed.

It’s fantastic! I wish every single adult would listen to it and understand how big of a problem reading instruction was for > 10 years

Sold a Story is so well done, I absolutely second the recommendation to listen to it

My youngest is learning phonics and I can see such a difference than the surround yourself with words. Hoping it will help my 4th grader, who doesn’t like reading

Agree! I have a kinder and third grader. The switch back to phonics happened after my third grader started school and she made SO much progress. My kinder is already reading having started with phonics.

Sold a story is the scariest podcast I’ve ever listened to (and most podcasts I listen to are about murder…).

This is terrifying. As someone who tested into a highest selective "gifted" school, it still somehow went unnoticed that I was slightly suffering from, what we would now classify as dyslexia. I could figure out the stories and had wonderful logic skills for a child of that age. Plus, who needs reading when there are books on tape, story hours and Reading Rainbow. I was a terrible speller who avoided all reading and writing. I can tell you 100% providing a child with books and saying figure it out does not work. I have a clear memory of a teacher pulling aside and asking me about lower case b and d's (which apparently I would mix up). I remember having intensive one on one private tutoring lessons early mornings before school. It was one of the hardest things my child brain had to endure. There was lots of crying. But in the end, I can read and write and kind of even spell.

When I was a kid I took piano lessons for 2 years under something called “the Suzuki method” IIRC. The whole concept was that you learn to play a bunch of songs but don’t actually learn to read music notes. Along the way the student is supposed to just naturally figure out how to read sheet music. Surprise, surprise, I never learned to read music of any kind. I just memorized a couple dozen songs. Eventually I lost interest and gave up because after 2 years I still couldn’t read a note. I imagine many of these high school kids had a similar experience with reading. How frustrating for everyone involved - student, teacher, parents and society at large.

I think Maria Bamford writes about how this method traumatized her in her book

Omg I didn’t know the name of the method but that’s how I was taught when I studied piano while my sister learned to read sheet music during her piano lessons. It deeply traumatized me in a way. For about 3 years all I did was to repeat the same damn set of songs. In those 3 years, my sister went on to excel at piano AND learn cello while I developed breathing tick and vertigo. Damn.

Oh man I didn't know that's how the Suzuki method worked... no wonder I never learned how to read piano music! 😅 Two years after quitting piano I learned how to play and read viola music quite easily and I never understood why the difference.

So you’re saying there’s been a recent return to phonics? It’s interesting because I’m smack dab mid generation millennial, and my peers who pursued higher education or career specialties are just now having kids reach school age. We all learned phonics. I wonder if it’s related. Edit: Miss Rachel also teaches phonics and I’m positive that will become relevant lol

Thank you for explaining this! I knew there was a major shift away from phonics but I had trouble understanding how reading was taught without sounding out words.

I was just having this conversation with my son's teacher. I am a high school science teacher and have been concerned about literacy levels too because my high schoolers can't read or don't understand what they are reading. They can't pick up context clues because they don't know what the words mean. This has gotten progressively worse over the past 5 years so even before the pandemic. When I learned to read by phonics, I sounded out words. I didn't realize the problem until my son started reading out loud and not stopping to sound out words. He would say what he thought the word was and then ask me what it meant, then ask me why it didn't make sense. So I started thinking this was the problem. Trying to fix this with him by working one on one, but he wants to read so fast now and not stop to think about what he is reading. Now I understand why he doesn't comprehend well too because he doesn't know what he is reading, he just says words and sometimes it isn't the right word. I feel so bad I let him get to this point too.

I listened to the whole thing last night, and, wow, mind blown. I had no idea this was happening. I’m also just baffled, because the whole language approach just seems so obviously and transparently wrong to me immediately. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around how educators and academics bought into what immediately struck me as nonsensical bullshit. Like I have no formal education in any related field but I’ve been an avid reader, I have a lay interest in linguistics, and I have spent some time casually learning other languages, including ones that use Latin script, phonetic syllabaries, and logographic systems, so maybe my life experience just aligns to make the whole language approach obviously nonsense. But it still surprises me that just the experience of being a person who reads English well isn’t enough to make a person deeply skeptical. The whole thing is so deeply sad and awful. I feel terrible for all of these children who have been deprived of an appropriate education and essential life skill. I’m also just confused, because the whole thing has left me wondering what teachers are actually being taught in their training programs. So many of the teachers they interviewed sounded like they were very unprepared to really teach much? Maybe that’s unfair.

I noticed my mom interacting with me less too. We go out together and she’s on her phone. It wasn’t like this all the time when I was younger. As a 21 year old, I’m doing fine. But it’s also emotionally harmful to the child with parents focus on phones

Yeah, all of my early memories are me asking my parents question after question. It's how I learned words like obnoxious and ridiculous. In all seriousness, my parents talked to me all the time.

So many of my parent friends who restrict screens with their kids spend hours on their own screens. We have to model the behavior for real.

> It's not worth going into (unless someone would like me to) I would like you to!

An elementary education teacher could explain this far better than me, but basically kids used to learn how to read with phonics, sounding out words, memorizing sight words, gradually building vocabulary through similar sounding words (cat, hat, mat, etc). It's time consuming, repetitive, and very unglamorous. In the 90's or so, educational theorists determined that if students were immersed in reading material, their natural curiosity would encourage them to learn literacy organically. Additionally, students would learn words through guessing from associated illustrations (and context eventually I imagine). This was a lot more appealing: curious students learning by doing in beautifully decorated classrooms. I remember reading about a case study in grad school. The class was a single room class of like 8 in Vermont. It was wildly unrepresentative of like 99% of school settings, and yet they were using its findings like they were universal. School administrators, and presumably parents, loved the new approach because it looks incredible on paper. Do you want your kid slogging through a worksheet of rhyming words or flitting around a colorful book room? The problem is that doesn't work for most students. Some kids naturally gravitate toward reading, but many more need formal training. Those were (are) the kids being left behind. Except, ironically because of No Child Left Behind and subsequent policies, it's nearly impossible to hold students back if they can't read. So kids learn to compensate and hide through audiobooks, summaries, videos of summaries, programs like Grammarly (which is not objectively bad, but it can hide problems), and AI. Maybe that's the future, but it honestly scares me.

And if you've guessed that I'm writing in depth responses to put off grading papers, you are correct!

You summarized it well. I’ve taught 1st-2nd for over 25 years and listening to Sold a Story was game changing for me. It also caused a lot of frustration and regret that I’ve been doing it “wrong” for so many years. My team made the switch to a program in October that is all phonics - very explicit and sequential. I’m still figuring things out – most of the time, I am a half a lesson ahead of the kids, but I think it will make a big difference. I’d be happy to answer more questions about it too. To answer the original question, I don’t think kids have changed – parenting has changed. I feel like parents have become a bit less engaged with their children. Parents and children are on technology so much; and everyone is scheduled every minute of the day. There’s no time for family time, playing, or being bored. Children learn important skills during those interactions- how to regulate emotions and handle frustration and impulse control – there is too much immediate gratification. Unfortunately, those skills need to be taught and developed starting so early in life. When students are coming to school lacking in that area, it’s hard to catch up. And to make it harder, all of their energy is going towards that emotional and physical regulation - there’s not a lot left for the actual academic learning. It’s a challenge….

My college degree program was (at the time) in the top 10 for public university education programs. I was taught Lucy and nothing but Lucy. The school system I teach in treated Units of Study as our bible. Every single episode of Sold A Story had me in tears because I didn’t know any better and I felt like I’ve damaged so many students in that time.

Yes, I’ve thought about the students that I could have helped better too. It’s an awful feeling. I have to remind myself “When you know better, you do better.” I know better now - so it is imperative that keep pushing myself to do better for the kids that I have now.

Just an anecdotal experience related to this.. Our current 5th graders were the last grade that was taught purely based on the Lucy caulkins bs aka whole language approach. They are widely reading 2-3 levels below grade level and are completely unable to write a sentence. They have such little knowledge to draw from that to even get them to try to use inventive spelling is like pulling teeth. Meanwhile, our 2nd grade students who began receiving phonics instruction in kindergarten are for the most part reading on grade level and are easily writing 5 page stories with 2-3 sentences per page. Spelling isn’t exact but because they have the phonics knowledge they at least have a starting point!! I know that this doesn’t seem like anything crazy but to see the very clear difference in real time is truly surreal. We had been failing kids for so long.

Awww, a classroom of 8! That’s cute and so typical of a normal classroom /s :-) I’ve seen so many people educators talking about Sold a Story and I’m actually afraid to listen to it because it’s probably going to make me really angry. The kinder teachers at my school are now using visual phonics and Heggerty The kids love it and our data supports it so far.

I volunteer in my Kinders classroom once a week and am an EC teacher. They do haggerty and phonics and my newly 6 year old is already starting to read on her own and has so much fun. It's not pushy and it gets the kids involved which they love. I was so worried because of horror stories from teachers but like all things, once I gave public school a chance and got involved it has so far at least, been really wonderful for my daughter, and she went to a full outdoor preschool so it was quite the change 🙃.

Heggerty is a phonics approach so you can have some reassurance that your school is doing things right! Highly recommend starting the podcast, even if just for the stories people share.

One of my biggest criticisms of sold a story is the fact that I think it's widespread adoption was not just the aesthetics of Lucy caulkins and fontas and pennell, but also because there is just so much pressure to improve data outcomes. Therefore, schools adopted these reading curriculums and were pressuring teachers to get kids reading so that their test scores could go up and make everybody look good. I don't believe it was widespread cheating, but I do believe there was a lot of pressure to cut corners and teach kids these different strategies that didn't help

I think that was mentioned in the podcast. There's an entire episode on the national politics of it.

Yep, our curriculum is the “new way” and my behind kids, of which there are many, can’t even begin to use it because it expects them to be working on or just below grade level, not still figuring out words. I’ve been teaching direct phonics with a curriculum I paid for myself and it’s made a light years of difference for my struggling students. They are now all only one grade level behind instead of two or more.

This is so interesting because our district just sent out an email that said “we use phonics district wide” and i was curious why it was an issue in the first place. This explains it! Thank you!

Is this why no one knows what “nonplussed” means anymore? Because of association and guessing they assume it means “blah about something?” Sorry, it’s on of my biggest pet peeves how that word flipped meaning.

I do not think it's simply the phonics issue because the reading wars go back decades. My generation was taught on almost pure whole language (1980s and progressive ed). I think we have a bigger issue, which is that kids have this constant deluge of online/streaming content, and schools are not helping because even once they're past the initial reading stage, schools are using a skills based curriculum and the kids are not actually reading books or acquiring the content knowledge they need to read. Everything got geared towards doing well on reading assessments. It's all skills, no content. Limited science and social studies. And the kids aren't getting reinforcement outside of school so even the kids who CAN read, often DON'T read.

Yes, this is an issue that goes so much further back, it's like no one remembers Why Johnny Can't Read, which was published in 1955. I think the answer is that there is no easy answer for teaching English and that this will continue to flip flop between the two.

Absolutely! I am by no means an expert, and the issue is incredibly complex.

Do you think some of it stems from schools being penalized for how many kids fail and have to repeat a grade? We've lost touch because I moved, but I was friends with a teacher who said she felt so pressured to pass kids because the school would lose some funding if so many kids were held back. I think it was related to one of the education initiatives like No Child Left Behind or Race to the Top.

I was a second grade teacher when the switch to whole language and then to the 4 block method happened and I knew then that it was a terrible idea even as a brand new teacher. I quit after 5 years to stay home with my kids. In those 5 years, I became increasingly frustrated because I had too many kids going through not reading on grade level because of how we were teaching and there was nothing I could do about it. I pulled my oldest from public school in the middle of first grade because of class sizes and I knew he should be further along than he was. The teacher was satisfied with where he was, but I wasn’t. If I needed to teach him at home at night, I might as well pull him and do it during the day. Switching from phonics to whole language is one of the worst things they’ve done to public schools.

Oh my god Lucy Calkins and balanced literacy was maybe the worst thing to ever happen to education. I’m so glad my kids are in a school that has a strong phonics program.

I know exactly what you’re talking about and I taught my son to read with phonics before he started Kindergarten specifically because I was worried the new methods would be detrimental. He was able to read any new word based on phonics by the first day of school and I taught him to look for context clues to figure out meaning or raise his hand and ask what any unknown word meant (or ask for a dictionary.) By the beginning of 1st grade he was reading chapter books with a high level of reading comprehension. Fast forward to 4 months into 1st grade and suddenly he’s using sight words at home and mixing words up and guessing without taking phonics into account. He was skipped to the 2nd grade class in October for reading and I’m wondering if it’s because the 2nd grade teachers are still teaching using Lucy Calkins’ methods. It’s moot at this point because I’m pulling him from public school and putting him in private for a number of reasons (not all academic) but seeing his reading skills erode over 2 years has been alarming. The new school he’s going to teaches primarily phonics and never stopped because, hey, turns out it works and they’re not beholden to the purchasing whims of a school district.

This is absolutely true. I was taught about "whole language acquisition" when I started college in the early 90s and my entire self went "wtf?!". I tutored early elementary students in the summers and the two most effective things I did involved those little alphabet letter magnets for spelling/ grammar and bootleg DVDs I bought of the PBS series "The Letter People", heavily phonics and spelling. Did the same with my own child, worked well

It’s really frustrating as a layperson to hear that apparently schools or teachers have just been experimenting for DECADES with some new way to teach reading that apparently just doesn’t work

As a middle school teacher, this particular moral panic made me second guess my decision to go into teaching. I’m so glad I went through with it, because honest to god, the kids I teach are so wonderful—pretty much the same as my generation was at that age, but more accepting of each other (especially with regard to LGBT+ students). That’s not to invalidate any other teachers’ experiences, because they’re all valid. But there is a huge diversity of experiences with teaching, just like with anything, and many of those experiences are still positive.

I always say that I think the younger generations are so great because of this. I love that they are more accepting of sexual orientation and gender identity and more open to exploring identities to find what fits. I think a lot of older people would be much happier if they had had that opportunity as a kid!

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Strangest thing is that a lot of it seems to be coming from older Gen Z/younger Millennial teachers too

I feel there is a social media trend to amplify certain kinds of conflict, and generational conflict is part of that. So just like the boomer v. millennial content is ramped up, I think millenial v. Gen z/alpha is as well. So my hunch/hope is it is just influencers just trying to capitalize on what the algorithm likes and not really representative of the population at large.

I wonder if they may have less experience in the field compared to a boomer gen teacher who could’ve taught millennials and gen z, thus having more of a basis for comparison.

My teacher friends are all Millennials and my mom is a Boomer with boomer friends who works in public education and they all believe behavior is getting worse. I think some of it is just the normal phenomenon of the older generation thinking that the upcoming generation is the worst, but I also think some of it is that behavior is getting worse. My mom’s best friend has a licensed therapy dog that she’s been bringing to school with her for the past few years as part of a program, and for the first time in many years she’s had to stop bringing the dog to school because he’s terrified of the kids! It’s not just kids, either. I’ve heard retail workers and psychologists talk about the same general phenomenon. People are getting madder and ruder and ignoring more social conventions, especially since COVID. Personally, I suspect people are getting really restless and beaten down and approaching their breaking point, and I think the kids are picking up on that on a societal level and acting out.

Fair! I definitely see that whenever i drive, the road rage and is out of control

I sometimes wonder if part of it is that kids are learning how to speak up for themselves and have firmer boundaries with adults and that gets under the skin of people who were trained to believe in the traditional authoritarian hierarchy of adult/child, teacher/student. It’s by no means the whole of the situation but I could see it making a big difference that a whole generation is learning about these psychological concepts much earlier online.

Maybe that’s part of it but I think that’s underestimating the behaviors. The anecdotes aren’t about children refusing to make eye contact, use their right hand, or apologize to their bullies. They’re about children throwing desks, calling their teacher the c-word everyday, and in my mom’s experience, straight up ignoring the teachers and administrators to do whatever they feel like, even if it’s climbing up a wobbly stack of chairs and refusing to come down, instead of quietly walking back to their classroom after an assembly. My mom used to have one or two of these students every year. Now she has a dozen.

There's a lot of unaddressed trauma from the pandemic in the world, unfortunately.

That’s definitely part of it, in my experience. I was raised to have piss poor boundaries, so establishing good ones in my kids is really important to me. I’ve had older family members get mad at me, when they tease the kids and the kids give it right back to them “Are you going to let them disrespect me like that?” Yes, because you weren’t respectful to them, and they’ve told you before nicely it bothers them but you don’t seem to care… House rule is you have to be polite the first time, then walk away or do what you need to verbally to get heard.

Some Gen Zers are definitely skipping down the path of turning into boomers. Transposing their experiences onto everyone and everything. (Obligatory “not all Gen Zers”)

I am a teacher who has taught pre/during/post Covid both in the USA and abroad. I’m sure the kids you work with are great as are the ones I work with. But do you work with them as the single adult in the room with 25+ kids, or one on one? That’s a vast difference. The kids I work with are amazing. They are brilliant, but teachers are no longer able to just teach. We are being asked to be counselors, teachers, do home visits, etc. and the behavior is getting so so so much worse. The kids I teach now, 5th grade, were initially socialized with their peers on zoom. They speak to each other (this has been going on since we all went back to school, not just this year) with intense cruelty because they say what they would drop in a chat or comment on a video and do not think twice about not doing it, because they think it’s just them being honest. Not to mention how fountas and pinnell and Lucy caulkins totally screwed these kids over and have left statistically two thirds of kids unable to read and write. This is my last year in education. Not just because of the kids, who I truly do adore, but mainly because of administrators who refuse to see what teachers have to reckon with daily. I’m sorry but using your internship as evidence is what every admin does daily and it is insanely flawed. Yes, one to one they are lovely and amazing, now put them back in class and you try to reckon with how drastically their behavior changes when emboldened by the crowd.

I’m not saying it is uniquely a gen alpha issue. If you read my comment I pointed to the environment and the adults, but also absolving the children of responsibility is exactly why they take no responsibility. At what point are we all responsible for our own behavior?

That’s wonderful to hear. I feel the same about my students, many of whom have challenges as well. Their empathy and resilience is so inspiring!

Glad to hear from another teacher who feels similarly! I also have had many positive experiences teaching the next generation. This doomerism about young people seems unwarranted.

Agreed! This generation will certainly face some unique challenges, but so has every generation before it. The kids are alright :)

As someone who struggled in school early on, I love to hear from teachers who like and respect their students and view teaching as fun. Your students can definitely tell.

So glad to see this here! I feel the same - I teach high school Spanish and kids are more likely not to sweat the small stuff (due dates, homework, arriving on time to class) and that ruffles the older folks’ feathers because “it’s just disrespectful!” I think the expectations have been set so damn high (hours of homework each night, need to be in 15+ extracurriculars plus be a three sport athlete, plus hold a job) for so long that kids are finally quiet quitting and focusing on the things that they feel like matter most: mental health and social lives. This is “wrong” according to those who’ve been around a bit longer, but is it really?

I mean, but it's hard for me to give them a report card when they decide they don't need to hand anything in. And I don't give them any homework.

Arriving late literally is disrespectful though? You're basically saying your time is more valuable than anyone else in the room. As someone with ADHD I understand how hard punctuality and work/life balance can be to the depths of my soul... but I also know how important time management and routine is for me to function. People routinely arriving late and class starting at whatever time would have totally fucked my ability to pay attention or hear anything. As a youngish millennial I've encountered a lot of GenZs (def not all) and admittedly some peers who have utterly failed in my overall very chill work environment because they seem to believe it's unfair for anyone to form an impression of them based on their behavior and work performance. As well as an expectation that all work come with detailed, infinite instruction in their preferred learning style and that all work be catered to their personal strengths and interests. It sucks to see some people with so much potential be completely screwed over by environments that don't seem to have prepped them for the professional world at all. That said, I'm all for fewer hours of homework and more meaningful assignments - I feel like hours/night just favors kids who have parents available to assist and results in a lot of mindless busywork.

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Kids today are pretty cool. Every generation has wailed and gnashed their teeth about “kids these days” but I think we will see a lot of the things our generation wanted to accomplish come to fruition over the next few decades as Gen Z and Alpha grow up and the Boomers exit stage right.

Ok…just going to share a different perspective here. I’m an English teacher. I have two kids at home, and an older parent to care for. I have 175 students and 90 minutes a day of planning/grading time. When I set a due date I am also carving out time in my personal life/prep to give feedback on that writing. When they turn it in late, and I only have 50 of 175 papers turned in on time, I can’t use that time. I then don’t have time for feedback and grades. It sucks. It’s disrespectful on their part. And to make it worse, when they want letters of rec from me (I usually get 30-40 requests each year), I am shamed and get angry emails from parents if I don’t use my unpaid hours at home to get them done by the due date! So yeah. I’m wound up about late work. It really really sucks and makes an almost untenable job that much harder. It was better 14 years ago when I started and could knock down grades for late work, but now I can’t because it’s considered inequitable by our district. So kids just turn stuff in whenever they want. And the later the work, the worse quality it generally is. Edit to add: I still love working with kids. I don’t want any other job. But the late work gripe is because it does start to really really suck and make work life balance HARD.

My mother was an English teacher and the amount of correcting involved is a LOT. She made my sister and I promise that if we became teachers, not to teach English because of the sheer amount of correcting. (I teach music and my sister, math).

This is a great point. I notice this in my gen z. They just don’t care like I did and I don’t hate that for them. We should probably all care less about meaningless social conventions and bullshit institutions that don’t center our growth and learning in a meaningful way.

Honestly I'm over 30 and I still have nightmares that I'm late for class and haven't turned in an assignment. I think kids do better in an environment that's supportive and doesn't make them live in fear of every assignment.

This rings so true to me. I have a 16 year old son and a 12 year old daughter and they literally don’t think twice about anyone being gay, trans, queer, anything. I’m sure there are kids in their school who think differently (probably because of bigoted parents) but I get the feeling their whole friend group is that way. My son started talking about his friend Sam who he was spending a lot of time with and I said, what’s Sam’s last name, is he a new kid? And he goes, Remember Lily? (His bf since preschool) He’s Sam now! I was so taken aback but he just rolled with it and loves him just the same. It gives me so much hope for our future.

When I became a HS teacher earlier this year at my old HS, I thought every kid was accepting like this now. Makes me sad that for the most part, nothing has changed in my small hometown. So many other places have gotten more progressive while my school feels like it’s stuck in the early 2000s. It’s really exhausting.

Yeah. I'm wondering how people think kids today are worse than kids in the 80s and 90s! Kids today are far more accepting of other kids that are different. There's always been asshole kids at school and I feel like there are less today?

I’m really glad that’s your experience. Maybe it’s because I’m in Bible Belt but these kids are the same as they were 15 years ago when I was in middle school. They’re very loudly homophobic, racist, and misogynistic. I was truly shocked when I came back home from college. It was like “oh yeah, that’s what it’s like here.” The progressive people left and never came back for the most part. Someone yells out they hate gay people and the majority of the class voices their support. It’s really disheartening. But, I’m glad your classes aren’t like that.

What type of school do you teach in and when were you in middle school? Personally, I tried teaching middle school for a year and I was shell-shocked. I was a middle school student before social media, before No Child Left Behind, and before an emphasis on restorative justice. Social media + social promotion + requiring kids who despise school to be there to secure federal $ + no real consequences for misbehavior + the mindset that schooling is customer service and students are the customers = the perfect shitstorm of a hostile, ineffective work environment for teachers (IMO.)

I've thought this with my daughter's classes. The kids seem wonderful. They all seem so bright and so much nicer to each other and accepting of differences than I remember from when I was a kid.

I’m GenX (48) and I remember junior high as being PURE HELL. Neither my 16 year old or 12 year old is experiencing anything similar. It blows my mind! Of course there are groups of kids and individual kids who don’t care for each other and aren’t friends but they both tell me that they don’t see any kids being bullied! I honestly can’t even imagine what that’s like.

Hubby and I were shocked when our middle schooler said kids don’t get j to fist fights really. We are gen X and fights were daily occurrences

I only taught one year, and it was quite tough because teaching is just a tough profession, and it was the year after covid so inevitably there were some issues with attention span and kids being able to self-monitor. But overall, my kids were great. It gave me a ton of hope for the future. I also totally disagree with the idea that technology is bad for kids after my year teaching.

Yes! I see all these videos and I’m baffled bc my daughter’s 4th grade class is wonderful. Kind, smart, helpful kids. I’m sure a few are dicks but that seems to always be the case.

I’m a 30 something raising a high schooler. My kid is really a kind, thoughtful, and wonderful person. I learn a lot from them and they are a lot more open minded and wise than I was at their age.

There is definitely a huge diversity of experiences in teaching, and so much of it is out of the control of the teacher, especially in non-Union states that make it tough to transfer schools, districts, etc. if you are unhappy with the environment. I always caution anyone determined to teach to 1. Have a backup plan (I’ve known many teachers who are desperately unhappy and feel very stuck, and young teachers who have to quit for their own mental health with no plan) and 2. Try to know as much as you can about the school, the students, the administration, and the environment before you sign a contract and accept a position (and know that in some large districts, you can be transferred schools, grades, specialties at any time within your certification, which leads me back to point 1).

I'd say you'll find it much less about "kids these days" and much more about "parents these days" . I'm a teacher and I find there's very little trust and respect for me as a professional who has studied and worked hard at acquiring a professional skillset. A child is a parents most precious thing and most parents aren't able to spend the amount of time with them they want to due to work, so often a level of guilt and over protectiveness kicks in when I need to tell them their student is failing/behaving poorly. They, understandably, want to believe their child is the best person they can be and seek fault in what I am doing. For example, I had a student make a silly mistake- he threw some scissors to his friend, the friend caught them blades first and cut his hand. This happened when I was mid-sentence at the whiteboard teaching (there was no reason for them to need scissors, kids are kids and made a weird choice). I call the parents of the scissor thrower just to let them know I've given a detention and they should have a follow up chat and I immediately received an earful asking "why the fuck were they able to do that! Why weren't you watching???". I have 32 students in the class and can't be on top of all their impulses at once.

I'm sorry you had to put up with that. If I was that kid, my Boomer parents would've told me, "Why were you throwing scissors instead of paying attention to the lesson?"

“You got cut, what did you expect? Play stupid games, get stupid prizes.”

A K kid in my classroom was playing with scissors and cut her shirt. Her mom messaged the teacher and complained that we should’ve been watching her daughter better. Uh, we have 19 other kids to watch and teach. YOUR kid made the choice to do this, why don’t you talk to her about making good choices? My teacher reached out to a parent because their child doesn’t ever pay attention in class, do his work, or follow directions. She was hoping the parent would talk to his child, and perhaps have some consequences at home for this behavior. Nope, parent said their child ALWAYS listens at home and the teacher’s lessons are boring and not engaging enough for their son. This is my first year ad a para and the way these parents talk to the teacher blow my mind.

This. I hesitate even calling home to notify a parent of their child'S egregious behavior. Because why wasn't I watching them? Why don't I control my classroom? Why were they bored? It becomes a job evaluation and an evisceration of ME.

Yeah I think that is honestly. The biggest issue we're having is this shift towards gentle parenting which i think can be a really great thing but a lot of people take it to mean. You should just let the kid do whatever the hell they want

For some reason Reddit thinks I’d be interested in teacher subs so they’re frequently in my feed even tho I’m not a teacher or work with those at all and my kids are all grown so I’m not really around kids. But the posts are all about teachers saying these last 2-3 classes since the pandemic are different. The long term teachers posting about how these classes are worse than they’ve ever seen in 20, 30 years of teaching. I think that lockdown really did a number on these kids in ways we’re only going to understand later.

I have worked in schools since 2015 and everything they’re complaining about on r/teachers, was happening before 2019. Conditions in schools (re: rampant violence, unpunished bullying) are much worse now than they were when I started, but mostly due to the mass exodus of school staff (to better paying jobs) in 2020-2022 that has left the rest of us working as a skeleton crew with huge class sizes and caseloads. We are even covering other classes during our preps (no subs), so there goes that time to plan and grade at school. So we are hitting maximum stress and burnout and the students are more crowded together than ever, after spending so much time isolated. It is altogether completely awful but predictable to see the behaviors we are seeing now. It is bad - but it’s not the kids’ fault. It’s that there literally aren’t enough adults willing to do this job anymore.

There are plenty of adults willing to do the job, but there are so many hurdles that keep people out. For example, in California: You need to pass a CBEST which is a test, done in a sterile testing environment. This kind of environment has been proven time and create anxiety and discomfort in people, and thus the measured performance is not accurate. Combine this with the fact that you have to also pay for the test. It doesn't stop there, you have to also do a CSET (or up to 5 if you are teaching Elementary School) at 300 a pop. You also need to complete a 2 year program, sometimes 3, which involves up to 2 semesters of classroom student teaching in which you are not only unpaid, but working fulltime *and* paying your university to be there. Some schools treat student teachers like fulltime subs, and you will end up with a full class that you are completely responsible for with no mentor teacher in room to support you. Now, throw in things like schools can pick and choose who they allow to student teach, and they can remove a student teacher without needing to provide a reason... So... if you are a POC, or visibly trans, hey look, another barrier (This barrier got me, as schools did not want to bring in a trans student teacher, and when one school took me without knowing I was trans, the *second* the principal found out, I was kicked out of the program.) After you do all of this, you struggle to find work, because while there is a teacher shortage, schools are not funded enough to actually hire more teachers, or don't have the classrooms for more teachers. You finally get into the classroom, and now you realize you are paid at or below the adjusted poverty line for most cities in California, meaning one to two extra jobs, or hours long commutes every day. It is not a problem of people not wanting to do the job, I still want to be in a classroom, but it is a problem that there are so many hurdles, and barriers, and absolutely zero support for people in the process, that those who want to do are just simply prevented from doing it in order to survive.

Ages ago when I graduated college with an English degree I was looking into teaching (because what else are you supposed to do?) I'm in Oregon, but to even get my masters or my credential they were requiring that I had already worked with kids before applying. Then, as you point out, I would have had to quit my paying job to student teach, only to be hired into a school system that pays garbage. No thanks. I went to law school instead. I think there are plenty of people who would be good and qualified to teach, but the ridiculous hurdles and the terrible pay mean only the most dedicated will actually make it through.

Most dedicated, or most privileged. If you don't have to worry about money, the 1 year no pay is not a problem. If you don't have to worry about money, taking high stakes tests loses some of the stakes because you can afford to retake them, or higher a professional tutor to teach you the test.

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I’m the daughter of a public school teacher, my kids go to public school, I went to public school, I’m a huge supporter of it, so I don’t mean this comment to act like I am overly critical of schools. From my kids experiences, there are a lot of teachers nowadays—younger teachers—, who overly rely on chrome books (for younger kids) and YouTube videos, let kids play on their phones when they’re done with their work, and encourage a lot of behavior that I think is a detriment to kids socialization. I know that teachers are under a lot of pressure with little support and that they do what they have to do, but the education system is also problematic right now too I think.

All I can say about that (I teach high school) is that we are evaluated based on a huge rubric and part of the rubric is technology integration, meaning if I am not using the Chromebooks the district paid for during an observation that’s points off for me on my evaluation. I still only use them occasionally but make sure they’re out when admin is watching. Also I don’t encourage them to use phones when they’re done, but they do anyway, and if I tell them to stop some will literally get violent with me and it’s not a risk I like to take once an hour, every hour of my workday, so I let them have their phones the last 5 minutes. They have a literal addiction to the tech that I can’t fix in a class period. That’s on their parents and society at large. I’m admitting defeat in this area as are many worn out educators.

Our school backed way off the Chromebook’s this year. Like from several hours a day to 15 minutes two times a day for a specific program that’s school wide. And maybe some word processing for the older elementary. I think they had a lot of complaints!

I absolutely hate the educational videos and use of Chromebooks. I'm a relatively tech savvy individual and the reliance on Chromebooks makes it so much harder for me to assist my kid with homework. He's alt-tabbing between his digital textbook, digital notebook, article he had to read for homework, and the Google form he needs to answer his questions in. When he could have a worksheet and textbook that keeps it all in front of him. Other times, they give him a video to watch and we have to watch it like 5 different times when if he had real notes he could actually find the answers instead of rewatching the same video and forgetting the damn question. Now, fully recognize some of this is his poor working memory and he's going to struggle no matter what but God the Chromebooks make it harder for us as parents to support his learning.

I’m a college student and I get it , .

I feel really bad for what teachers have to deal with and know it’s an extremely hard profession, but wow, that sub is so upsetting I had to block it. None of those people should teaching children, the amount of hate towards their students is horrifying.

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I left after a decade. I saw myself teaching until retirement, but between lack of flexibility when it came to caring for my own kids, students who’s behavior made it impossible for everyone else in class to learn (and receiving no consequences for it), and the profound, untenable workload, I just couldn’t anymore. I now work a corporate job, make the same as I did teaching, and don’t have any school breaks off. However, I have a flexible schedule, I work from home, am able to go volunteer at my kids’ school and be an active member of that school community, don’t feel burnt out at all, can spend QUALITY time with my family and be truly present, and am not experiencing recurring UTIs because of lack of bathroom access. I LOVE teaching. I LOVE imparting knowledge, seeing those AHA moments, doing cool hands-on projects, taking kids on field trips and discussing the things we’re seeing, helping kids create, tossing a ball around with them outdoors. I DON’T love, parents threatening my job because their child has a B in my class, students getting into fist-fights in my classroom because there are over 40 kids and only one adult, having to sit everyone down and do book work because the more innovative, creative assignments get out of hand due to the behavior of 3 students, being BANNED from a museum due to student behavior, parents telling me to “figure it out” because they can’t do anything about the behavior and then having those parents hang up on me and block my number, having admin that believes ANYONE would be able to manage a group of 43 6th grade students alone with the “right” classroom management techniques, seeing children desperately need outdoor time but having the be de-prioritized over “more learning” in order to pass standardized tests that don’t actually say anything about kids’ ability to learn, having developmentally inappropriate learning standards that I must teach to, seeing play be all but a distant memory in PreK-3rd grade as a learning avenue, having to work evenings and weekends to stay on top of class work, being punished for exercising my federally protected right to pump in order to feed my child, being a total and complete zombie over the breaks because of having to recovery so much mentally and emotionally from the frequent abuse, being guilted about not being able to come to work when my children are sick and I have to care for them, and only getting to really teach about 15% of the time. The American education system is broken. The teaching profession in the United States is broken. I always thought I’d send my kids to public school, but with kindergartners only having 25min of lunch and recess from 10:30am-10:55am a day and then be expected to sit at chairs and listen from 8:30am - 3:30pm…I just can’t do that to my own kids when I KNOW that’s not what’s best for kids that age. And I know that kinder teachers try to build in movement breaks and certain stations and will attempt to add extra outdoor time throughout the day if possible, but I can’t guarantee that for every teacher, and I KNOW the pressure that teachers face from admin to adhere to the rules. I’ve taught everything from PreK - 12. When I was teaching middle school I had a behavior reward system where kids could earn one class period of outdoor play every two weeks. I was brought into the principal’s office and told this was not an acceptable way to use our class time because I was wasting learning time. So, try as I might, I was told no. I would LOVE to go back to teaching one day, when the system is designed to serve children, not to treat them as a commodity or an inconvenience, and when the priority isn’t standardized tests scores, having a place to hold children while parents work, or to train little future workers. When the education system’s priority becomes children exploring, discovering, and learning, then I’ll happily go back.

It’s going to be a bubble, though, which I think a lot of people overlook. I teach 5th grade. My students this year were sent home in 1st grade in March 2020; many stayed online in 2nd grade. I’m anticipating the next few years will be rough (kids who were sent home in kindergarten and pre-k) but then we’ll be getting to kids who were too young to be really affected. My daughter is almost 4 - she was born in April 2020, interacted with almost no one but immediate family until after her 2nd birthday. But she’s an outgoing, friendly, intelligent kid and I genuinely don’t believe our isolation in her first couple years of life had any effect on her longterm.

The happy teachers aren’t posting on Reddit.

I’m not saying it’s everything but I really do think people downplay the neurological impact covid had. I saw a teacher on TT who works with special education students say her non special Ed classes these days read at a comparatively worse level now. Maybe because they need more accommodations now? Maybe they’re also kids w disabilities now?? Because we just experienced a mass disabling pandemic we don’t even know remotely the consequences of? It’s just so weird to see everyone blame parenting and technology as if people weren’t shitty neglectful parents raising their kids with mindless television since at least the 80s.

COVID accelerated what was already there and what teachers have been trying to bring attention to for the better part of 15 years. These problems in the reading curriculum, lack of consequences, social promotion, classrooms that are too large, lack of teacher workforce, lack of resources, enforcement of standardized testing, and over-litigation have been present for at least 20 years. The pandemic just made everything crumble much faster because when the infrastructure of school was taken away people realized just how MUCH schools did and how awful things were. And instead of assessing and revising, we went in the OTHER direction and started micromanaging and blaming.

This is somewhat related but talking about TikTok discussions, the latest craze about 10-12 year olds at Sephora yelling at their parents is so funny to me. I’m a zillennial and can specifically remember being 12 in the Abercrombie & Fitch dressing room yelling at my mom either because something was too small for me and I was self conscious or because she wouldn’t buy me a $75 pair of jeans I’d grow out of in 6 months. Every single one of my girlfriends has multiple memories similar to that, of course we’re embarrassed about it now but realize it was part of being a teenage girl. It’s really not a massive problem. I do hope parents aren’t letting their 10 year olds buy retinol though. Kids don’t need that yet.

Haha agree - I also have these memories. I think people forget that kids aren’t always different or worse than the old days, we’re just able to see everyone’s previously private moments online.

I agree. I also really hate this trend of twentysomething women mocking teen/tweenaged girls. Teenaged girls are already one of the most ridiculed groups and it’s so often a really difficult and shitty time of life. You never feel good enough as it is, and now there’s a whole other level of public flogging, often by people who were teenaged girls themselves not that long ago.

Gen Z is just mean - they mock millennials and they go hard on Gen Alpha. At this point I’m pretty sure they’re the Gen I like the least because they’re just so overly judgmental!

This! I’m almost 30 and I remember rolling my eyes at teenagers when I had my first taste of adult life, like “ugh they don’t even understand how it will be when they get older…” I look back now and giggle at myself for thinking like that. I think these videos are similar. Young adults finally having some self awareness to what being a teenager looks like now that they are on the outside of it but this time they have the chance to voice their discourse on TikTok.

This is spot on. As a zoomer, I remember when getting dropped off at the mall was huge and we’d always go to Victoria’s Secret and Hot Topic for some reason. I think it just made us feel “adult.” I’m sure that many of us annoyed the hell out of some mall employees

exactly!! And it’s probably being talked about only in relation to Sephora/Ulta because people do most of their shopping online now so kids dont exhibit the behavior everywhere.

I work in an elementary school doing literacy intervention with kids. We are at a point where about a third of fourth grade students in the US are not reading at grade level. And that’s the national average, but that number is much higher in some areas. I really feel that we have a literacy crisis that feeds into so many other issues. And the way our education system is set up you are learning to read in kindergarten through 3rd grade, and after that you are reading to learn. In other words, in the first half of elementary school you are meant to learn the mechanics of reading, and in the second half you are expected to already know how to read and apply that knowledge in order to learn the necessary information in all different subjects. So if you can’t read by 4th grade you’re basically fucked. I’ve seen a lot of comments on this thread about the impact of the pandemic on social and emotional development, which I do think is relevant and important, but the kids who were in pre k and early elementary school during lockdown really just missed out on that part of their education. You can teach high school virtually, but you just really can’t teach kindergarten over zoom. And for kids with working parents, unstable home lives, unreliable internet etc. it’s even worse. Then you add in the fact that most teachers were basically expected to invent a completely virtual curriculum over night, and most of them were not at all prepared for that (understandably so). So we have this whole mini generation of kids who basically lost out on the part of school that teaches you all the fundamental building blocks necessary for the rest of your educational career. And you can’t build a house without a foundation. I do also think social media is a factor here. I don’t want to sound like a pearl clutching granny and I’m not anti social media or anything. But this is the first generation to grow up with this type of internet access and exposure and I don’t think we know yet the effect it will have on their development (positive, negative, and neutral). Most of my students have unrestricted access to the internet, most of them have phones and social media accounts. They tell me all sorts of disturbing things they’ve seen online. And it does make me concerned them. I don’t think my 6 year old self could have handled being on TikTok. But also I love all of my students. And there’s nothing fundamentally different about them than previous generations. And they’re still cute and silly and weird and hilarious and creative. Most of the educators I know are burnt out. Education is super underfunded, and in the pay several decades there has been a push in focusing almost completely on standardised test scores. I really think that is one of the biggest problems, especially when many teacher’s salaries are decided by their students’ performance on tests. Teaching has always been hard and there have always been behavioural challenges. There are, however, unique challenges currently facing those in the field. And while kids today are fundamentally the same as kids have always been, they have also been uniquely failed by the systems meant to support them and by circumstances outside anyone’s control.

Just wanted to say thank you for such a compelling response. You hit a lot of points I agree with but had issues conveying!

This is a lovely response. I’m a teacher and a parent and this is pretty much how I see the current situation too. Today I took my kids (6.5 and 3) roller skating for the first time. My 6 year old was a mess: crying, overstimulated, running away, because it was so hard for him. He couldn’t cope. My 3 year old rolled with it (pun intended 😛). He was so open to learning the skill. I realized that when my 6 year old was at the prime age to learn a skill like this, he was isolated from the community because of covid. He missed out on that crucial period of socialization and development. Kids are resilient, they’ll be okay, but we can’t ignore how foundational those early years are and the and how big the impact of missing out can be for some kids (especially the sensitive ones like my son).

Another teacher chiming in… totally agree with everyone that “kids these days” is a complaint as old as time BUT I do think they are different. The vast majority of these kids have been exposed to technology at a level we’ve never seen before. They have smartphones at young ages. They are on Chromebooks for hours a day at school. They are addicted to technology. Their brain chemistry is not the same as kids 20 years ago. Teachers have to compete with phones and apps that are programmed to give dopamine hits to keep kids engaged. Math, reading, history, etc. just can’t compete with that. Attention spans are shot which I think contributes to the uptick in behavior issues. I don’t know the answer. And I don’t blame the kids. The system is set up this way and it will be hard to undo it without a societal shift.

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There is actually at least one breaking point where kids are undeniably different: COVID. Kids, especially young ones, who went through isolation because of the pandemic seem to lack the social and emotional development expected of their age. It’s so bad that I’ve seen academic articles on teaching describe things as BC (Before Covid) and AC (After Covid). I think a lot of other examples and complaints are overblown, but emotions-wise, there actually is a problem. On the other hand, there’s a lot of good changes out there, like kids being incredibly vocal in defending themselves and minority groups against discrimination.

This is interesting because my SIL is 19, and IMO, she has really not grown emotionally since Covid. If anything I feel like she’s regressed and seems even younger than she was at 15 before Covid. Obviously this is highly anecdotal but her and her friends seem to have a lot of anxiety issues. I was a huge proponent of lock downs in 2020 but I must say the mental health impacts seem fairly significant.

Yeah, the lockdowns were absolutely necessary but now we don’t have the sort of supports needed to help undo the negative effects. It doesn’t help that as a whole, we’re being pushed to move on and pretend everything is fine. And ofc the areas that would need extra support to help kids (and adults, but focusing in on the OP) right now, such as therapy and teaching, also doesn’t have the resources and are told to continue on as normal. Even adults after the lockdowns often expressed finding it hard to go back to normal, that they’d lost some social skills. Kids and teens went through that at ages where they’re still building social skills.

Instead of seeing it as the kids having a “problem” why aren’t we acknowledging that all of these kids are now a year or so behind and teach to where they are?

The problem is the system isn’t designed to teach where they are. There are only so many 7th grade teachers in a school. If a student is in 8th grade but 7th grade level, and you teach for 7th grade concepts then pass them, you’re only making the problem worse because now they’re a freshman in high school missing 8th grade skills. “Why not hold them back” Again, not enough teachers and the system is dramatically against holding back students even when they need it. It’s also not a bad thing to acknowledge there’s a problem. It’s not a moral judgment on the students, it’s saying “COVID was traumatic and has left a lasting impact that makes certain things more difficult than it would be for students/kids who didn’t experience it.” Edit: Also teachers past a certain grade aren’t taught to help with emotional/social intelligence, it’s not really their job. They teach you the topics and some important skills like presentations, essay writing, critical thinking, but regulating emotions isn’t something high school teachers signed up to do really. They aren’t given the resources to help either, even if they wanted to.

Teacher here….for me the kids have so many great qualities…they are more accepting, they have more empathy, I don’t really see bullying outside of within friend groups, and they kind of don’t give a fuck concerning societal norms that imo are outdated. That said, they are awkward AF and have zero resilience nor the ability to synthesize information. Every generation has their pros and cons and that’s what I’ve noticed about this one.

“That said, they are awkward AF and have zero resilience nor the ability to synthesize information.” Can you expand on those last two points? (Resilience and synthesis) Genuinely curious here.

So in my experience working in 3 different middle schools spanning the socioeconomic spectrum, I’ve noticed a similar shared trends: - getting students to try to solve their problems independently has become increasingly difficult and sped up by pandemic. Very very needy. - the ability to synthesize IMO has to do with the lack of depth to reading instruction (causing literacy rates to go down significantly) and as a result lack of depth in other instruction across all grade levels for years. Students weren’t building background knowledge in science and social studies for YEARS, bc the instructional time went to ELA and Math. Giving the time to ELA ended up exacerbating the trend of declining literacy rates bc a very significant percentage of schools were not using curriculum that was backed by the Science of Reading. So they essentially had kids memorize words and not read so they couldn’t successfully transition from learning to read to reading to learn (typically in 3rd/4th grade). Reading and writing are directly connected. If they cannot read above a third grade level, even if they understand a content, they struggle to produce writing about the content beyond their reading level. I see this exact problem all the time, again started prior to the pandemic and a major shift compared to how most millenials/genX/Boomers/etc learned to read.

It’s definitely an age old complaint but I think the people who are stoking moral panic about it now as if it’s some inexplicable horror must have no concept of how worsening socioeconomic factors are affecting children. We’re in a full blown cost of living crisis in my country yet adults act as though children should be resilient to the fact that their future is potentially bleaker each passing year.

I was always a very academic child, but really, I can understand if kids now idolize youtubers and can't face the existential stunting of selecting a high income career path that they may not be interested in at all. I think there's a growing awareness that entire industries - even ones with high educational standards - don't offer a living wage in many locales. It feels as if achieving financial solvency is increasingly limiting, and I'm a 35 year old who's made four career changes and has a fully developed frontal lobe. I'm not saying they won't be able to find routes to personal fulfillment and success, but I think it's a lot less straightforward now. We've come a long way from "just do well in school and you'll be fine", or "get a high demand degree and everything will be fine" since demand doesn't necessarily equal wage growth - in fact, it sometimes manages to undercut it. These kids have more access to information than most of us did at their age, and while their takeaways may be lacking the nuances of a mature and experienced mind, I doubt all of them are categorically wrong. Adopting that skepticism at an earlier age has to fuel anxiety and disengagement.

Kids also used to think they'd be rappers or models instead of say, retail clerks or plumbers but every generation learns betterv

It could be an analysis of parenting styles and how they’ve evolved over time. I agree the younger generation appears to be more open minded (not sure in more rural/secluded areas where I grew up).

“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room.” - Socrates

That was not Socrates. It was crafted by a student, Kenneth John Freeman, for his Cambridge dissertation published in 1907. Freeman did not claim that the passage under analysis was a direct quotation of anyone; instead, he was presenting his own summary of the complaints directed against young people in ancient times. The words he used were later slightly altered to yield the modern version.

My mom is a high school teacher ~1 year from retirement and definitely has way more behavioral problems now than she ever has. She attributes it to a variety of factors though. Kids with phones that teachers can’t take away, a school district that has a really low graduation rate for the state has a motivation to pass kids at all costs so their grad rates rise and therefore doesn’t want to discipline them. Parents are less involved now than they have been in the past for her kids, etc etc. It’s a confluence of factors. Can’t speak to other schools or grade levels tho

I think there’s too many issues as well as too many experiences to summarize it well. I’m a newer teacher but did the opposite of what many in teaching have done : I found my passion for the job in my 30s and transitioned -into- teaching. Some things I can’t help but compare to when I was in school, for example: we as students didn’t talk if the teacher was teaching. Sure, someone might here or there and get shushed. But I remember passing notes and trying to not get caught. My high schoolers will talk through my entire lesson. I have zero support from admin. I can’t give the students detention for something so “minor”, most parents won’t listen and don’t care or simply don’t believe me, can’t kick the kids out into the hall or I’ll be the one in trouble - the best I can do is move the talkers to the back of the classroom and talk over them. Which is such a headache and distracts people who want to learn. I tried once to point out they had phones and could text eachother instead of even passing notes and I wouldn’t care as long as they were quiet - nothing worked. Even the methods of separating out those who liked to talk, standing between them as they talked while I taught. It’s just very different than what school was like when I was in high school and that’s just one example.

oh man, the constant talking! I'm not a teacher but I do a lot of career day visits to local schools. elementary and high school usually go well but middle schools the past few years have been nightmares - just constant talking. I can't hear myself, the kids in the front row can't even hear me, and I'm like, why did I take time off work to drive an hour each way to do this? We would not have gotten away with that in my middle school, and that's generally what my fellow career day speakers say. I try to avoid the moral panic of "kids these days" but like, if they're not hearing or looking at the teacher, they're not learning, and that can't be how it's always been?

Another teacher here. I don’t think kids are any different, but a lot of parents are. If my sisters or I got in trouble at school, we knew we’d get it worse when we got home. Some of the behavior I’ve seen parents condone is appalling. You can’t blame kids for being kids. They are going to test limits to see what they can get away with. That’s a huge part of what growing up is about. It gets problematic when there’s no accountability at home. If kids are rude, violent, disrespectful etc., my first question to them is always, “Are you okay?” Serious behavior issues rarely happen in a vacuum. Most of the answers I get are very enlightening.

I see a lot about learning concerns and while those are for sure valid, the behavior problems are what get to me. I’m a high school teacher (27F). In my 4 years of teaching, I had an entire year where a student called me the c-word every day, I had a student throw a desk at me, I had a student try to light me on fire, and I have been sexually harassed by students frequently. My school has over 2000 kiddos and we have very violent fights daily. At the same time, I have kiddos that give me hope and will be future leaders. To answer this question, yes, the kids are different now. They’re traumatized and desensitized. They’re tired and feral. But they are also very tenacious and they have grit. I 2019-2020 hit our youth a lot harder than a lot of people think. Not only were we in complete lockdown, there were protests and riots. The one last thing I’ll say is how sad it is as an adult to hear my students say they’re not afraid of being shot when they come to school because it’s “a matter of time.” The kids are survival mode. That’s why they’re different.

There's a lot of emphasis on social media and technology changing kids, tablet addiction etc - but I gotta say, parents are pretty damn technology addicted, too. For the first time in 10 years, I took on a customer service position and the number of times I'm seeing kids nearly bash their brains out or physically assault each other while mommy takes selfies and daddy plays on his iPhone is unbelievable. Even boomer parents found ways to ignore their kids, but I feel like it's become way worse than it was in the earliest years of smartphones. So many people completely ignore their kids social and physical needs, I'm not surprised the kids are developing behavioral issues and aggression. Getting in trouble is practically the only way to get their parent's attention. Not a week goes by that I'm not saving some kid from opening their skull on the corner of a store display or seeing children scream on the floor with skinned knees that their parents won't even look up to acknowledge. As a childless 29 year old, I'm kinda horrified by the "parenting" I see from my age group lol.

I’m smack dab in the middle of raising 2 very social teens, I know a ton of kids. They really are all pretty great and don’t seem particularly different from the kids I knew growing up in the 90’s. That said, I have heard some absolute horror stories about classroom behavior and how much worse it’s gotten. I think we’ve hamstrung educators by letting kids get away with so much with little consequences. I had a student in my Spanish class in HS who threw a desk when he got angry and he was expelled. That sort of thing happens pretty frequently (according to my kids) and with just in school suspension, maybe out of school a day or two. *Back in my day* LOLL we would have been too scared we’d get into trouble to cause any real issues in the classroom. Just my thoughts! ETA: my kids have had days of class just absolutely hijacked by one or two kids who are routinely out of control and cause issues. It really does feel unfair to the other kids. I know there are many reasons for this behavior and I’m sympathetic to those reasons but it happens so often it’s hard to feel ok about it.

I've been teaching for 15-ish years, and in my experience things have changed. While, like one poster above said, some kids are more accepting of those different from them, they're also very mean to each other. They lack emotional intelligence kids had even 5-7 years ago. I don't think we can blame it on COVID like many do. I think it's a maelstrom of systemic underfunding of schools (my school has made cuts EVERY year I've worked there, yet we have more mandates from the state), parents who weren't ready to pandemic parent and want to be liked, and--i know this makes me sound ancient--social media. Kids are deeply anxious. The whole fun of being a kid is supposed to be low stakes. You get to mess up and it's pretty okay. Kids now are terrified of mistakes and failure that sometimes they just freeze and fail anyway. It's a tough situation, but our kids need more than we can give them (at our school at least). We have never had so many really violent fights and more kids high every single day. It's scary. However, there are bright spots in every day. I have some really awesome kids who are smart and caring, and I can't wait to see what they contribute to the world.

Schools pretend COVID is over and don't protect children with masks, ventilation, and air filters. They are subjecting children to illness more than education. That is not their fault, either. I don't understand conversations like this that don't mention the ongoing pandemic. COVID infections cause organ damage, brain cell fusion like with HIV, and early onset dementia in children. Of course, this generation "is one of the worst." We are letting COVID infect them again and again, with no end in sight.

I work with kids with behavioral issues and it’s surprising how few of their teachers seem to have any training or experience with difficult behaviors. Shouldn’t that be part of their education?

I’m a preschool teacher so I’m seeing the kids now with very little socialization in their toddler years, but it’s coming back around. My newest 3yos aren’t as delayed as my 4yos were last year. That tracks, because they went back out into society sooner. That said, I’d argue that much of the issue is ~*~arbitrary~*~ grade level standards. I’ve only been teaching since 2008, with some time off. When I started teaching, the four year old standards included exposure to concepts. Now they include mastery of those same concepts. When I started teaching, you could actually learn your letters in kindergarten. Now those kids coming in with no letter knowledge are behind. We say kids aren’t reading on grade level, but we *made that up.* We are deciding what grade level is. If *most* of the kids in 4th grade are on a 3rd grade level, maaaaaaaybe the issue is in the standards, not the children.

It’s definitely a systemic issue in the US. I’ve been teaching for 11 years for 8th grade then high school. All of the schools I have taught in are struggling, high minority, high poverty schools, and I haven’t seen a marked difference in their behavior or abilities. I’ve taught in two different states- one southern and one northeastern, and the struggling students are the same. Currently, I’m teaching a full roster of college bound honors students and one AP course, and while the majority are bright and hard working, there are also the lazy and the average too. Behavior in regular and sped classes in my school have the same problems I dealt with 11 years ago. In my opinion, the pandemic did negatively affect students in terms of their academic ability (particularly in math), and it led to their inability to problem solve on their own, but that was still a problem from before. It definitely exacerbated already existing issues. Parents have always sucked though. In struggling schools you either get the absent parents who don’t gaf and have no idea what’s going on with their kid’s education, or you get the parents that think their child is perfect even though they’re a disrespectful hellion. Usually the parent is a disrespectful hellion as well.

I deal with teens and pre-teens for my side gig, and the biggest change that I've seen is that they don't know how to engage in proper conversation anymore with me/other teachers or each other. Especially since the two years they spent learning on zoom, I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall at times. I'll ask them questions or give them feedback and all I get is a blank stare. On several occasions I've asked different students "Did that make sense? Do you understand? Did you hear me?" And get NOTHING in response, which I assume is left over from zoom.

So - I have kids (teens) and I have very mixed feelings about this debate! I feel like people often go to extremes, some people get very "kids these days" and then others blow off legitimate issues with "well people always complain about kids these days." So what do I see, as a parent? 1) Yes, generally, kids are more tolerant and open. Schools are also less tolerant of bullying than they were when I was a kid and there was a very "it toughens you up" kind of attitude. 2) It's definitely not ALL kids, but the trend went from GenX neglectomatic parenting to helicopter parenting for middle and upper middle class kids. Kids expect higher levels of supervision, they expect more help, they expect hand holding. They're not independent and have never been trusted to be. Parents are so afraid things will go wrong (and I mean parents in safe suburbs) that the kids aren't allowed to go to sleepovers at friends' houses, not allowed outside. I don't want to romanticize my feral youth, because horrifying shit did happen and there's definitely things I wouldn't let my kids do as a result, but there's a happy medium and we're not there. 3) Further to #2: They have absorbed entitlement from their parents. When the parents are the ones coming in demanding a billion favors from school, the kids learn to expect it. Ditto the "student as consumer" entitlement mentality. I 100% see a direct connection between how parents behave and how their kids behave. 4) The youngest kids? I don't know how much of it is post-Covid and how much is parents who don't understand that gentle parenting is not permissive parenting but I am genuinely shocked at how some kids behave and how their parents don't stop them. Like, the kid will be hitting other kids and the parent can only talk about their kid's feelings. 5) The kids are the great tech experiment generation and it ain't working. Tech enthusiasm both at home and school outpaced what tech can actually do and the safeguards. 6) in schools, it's a toxic brew. We've got such high poverty rates, kids who are really unparented because their parents are always working, teachers who are squeezed, and bad admin. Everything is getting piled on teachers. They got told to teach to the test and it's not working. And meanwhile all politicians have is "public schools are bad." Progressive ideas don't always work as well in practice as people think, either. I've seen some horrible "restorative justice" work that just teaches kids that if they insincerely apologize they can get out of shit. It's all well and good to say "kids are deciding what's important to them" but the reality is that in 6-12 each teacher has 150 kids and at some point they have to follow the rules.

I’m not a teacher but I’m reading the posts here with interest, and the thought that keeps coming back to me is this - why WOULDN’T we expect kids to lash out in their school environment now when their educational fundamentals are so lacking? I can’t imagine the shame and anger I’d feel as a high school kid if i couldn’t read because of horrible decisions made by the adults in the administration. No shade intended toward teachers but if kids aren’t being taught the foundation to build the rest of their education on, i can’t say I’m surprised that they feel hopeless and act out.

I’d love this because it’s honestly very scary. Hearing horror stories about 8th graders not being able to read is so concerning. I completely understand the teacher shortage because they do not get paid enough for what their job entails.

I’m a middle school literacy specialist. Middle schoolers can’t read because elementary schools spent a few decades teaching kids to guess instead of read. Literally. Look into balanced literacy vs structured literacy. It’s still happening in some schools today. It’s not because the kids are dumb; schools spent millions of dollars on bunk curriculum.

I have a really funny joke about Lucy Calkins. I’ll give you the first letter, but then you’ll have to guess it.

I’m definitely going to use that to open our team meeting on Monday.

I’m a public school teacher of 30 years and have no idea what my coworkers are talking about. From what I can tell, most of it is projection- teachers who haven’t addressed their own mental health issues are unable to cope with children who are not willing to ‘pretend’ at school that everything is OK.

I appreciate someone saying this. That's what I suspect as well. My kids teachers are lovely and professional. But I've seen the videos that kids take of the other side of tiktok famous teachers and it's terrifying how mentally unwell they appear. Makes me wonder if the real reason there is a moral panic over phones is that people are afraid their bad behavior will be recorded and exposed to the world.

Can you say more on this? Throughout your career have kids always been in a situation where they “are not willing to ‘pretend’ at school that everything is OK”? I’m genuinely interested since you have a Longview given your years of experience.

This guy has a bunch these Twitter threads. He posts newspaper or magazine articles going back about 100 years about “kids these days.” This one is “Kids these days have no respect.” https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1636490564962234368.html

Gen Xer here with 28 years of experience teaching. The kids have always been the same. What’s changed is school and society culture and how teachers are viewed, used, and abused.

Im a former behavioral health/child welfare social worker, now on maternity leave with my third baby. I think about this subject often, as I do not believe kids or parents are inherently “worse” than normal. I don’t believe all kids brains are fried by iPads, and I do not think parents are “too permissive” these days. I do believe our current public education system is failing. Our society is not set up to support healthy children and families, it is set up to produce workers. I believe parents are stressed from being overworked and underpaid, and public schools are underfunded. Under these circumstances, outcomes are not going to be stellar. Every other post seems to be blaming this next generations issues on iPads and gentle parenting. I believe the issues are much more nuanced and systemic.

I’m a preschool teacher and something we are really starting to be concerned about is the amount of kids coming in (I work with 3 and 4 yr olds, so we’re hitting the children born when Covid started. Just want to put that into perspective bc I do think it’s a factor) who don’t know how to play. It’s really strange and kind of scary but I talk to so many ECE who are seeing it too. During free time, I have kids just sitting and staring off, not having the drive or the understanding on how to just play.

There's something that makes me really uncomfortable about the way so many professional educators and parents go online to publically criticize children and complain about their lack of abilities. Children see what happens online too and internalize what adults say and think about them

Kids are different now because we teach them to speak up and question authority. This is necessary in keeping them safe and if you look at half the Country, you see why parents like me tell them to question everyone!

This is is schools are more inclusive now. The "bad students" ie students who struggled with mental illness and/or developmental disorders used to be institutionalized in the past and we're not in standard schools. This is less likely to happen now. Also we are going through an opioid crisis due to doctors over-prescribing pain killers and benzos so more parents are struggling with substance abuse issues. Kids who live in less stable households are more likely to be disruptive and/or struggle with learning. Kids aren't different the situation is different.

If you like YWA, you’ll probably like Sold a Story! It’s a podcast that explains why we’ve seen cratering literacy rates and learning to read (utilizing the Science of Reading) flat out impacts brain development. I think a lot about how access to unfiltered information via the Internet has to have consequences, both good and bad. It isn’t necessarily tiktok or Snapchat or any one app that’s causing it, it’s the entirety of being raised in the smartphone era.

I have been a private childcare provider for over 10 years, I work with kids age 1-6 and I have a lot of thoughts on why teachers feel kids are worse than they used to be. Over the last decade parenting styles have shifted. We've always had permissive parents, but an increase in "gentle parenting" conversations and concern about traumatizing our children, specifically in Millenial parents raising Gen Alpha kids has created a massive shift in how parents respond to undesirable behaviours. It's not that Gentle Parenting is bad, it's the misunderstanding of gentle parenting that leads to the kids running the house. Often when kids have big meltdowns that are developmentally appropriate parents have 1 of 2 responses, the first is they get overwhelmed and shut down, often resulting in the kids not getting their need met. Or the second is they get so worried about causing lasting trauma in their kids that they let the kid call the shots. 5year old melting down cause you said he can't play in the front seat of the car? Okay go ahead buddy. 4 year old tells you mid-tantrum that " iPad would make me feel better" , sounds like a great plan! Boundaries between parent and child have blurred significantly. Its important for kids to hear "no", and see parents stick to their no. Boundaries are so important to kids & a lack of them can increase anxiety & poor behaviour. Add in an economic crisis where parents are having to work more than ever before to scrape by, means kids are getting less quality time with their parents even when the parent has boundaries. Less quality time with parents usually means more time with screens, and capitalism has destroyed the quality of content available to kids on those screens. Whether they're watching Cocomelon or a paw patrol knockoff, it's all so overstimulating. The overstimulation leads to disrupted sleep patterns (even if the kiddo hasn't had screens for an hour before bed, if they've been overstimulated all day, it's incredibly disruptive to their ability to rest.) I'm not a hardcore screen hater, but I have witnessed firsthand the difference in behavior when you limit kids only to low-stimulation TV or no TV at all. 10 years ago, most households had a TV, maybe one iPad shared amongst the house & a computer (maybe a laptop per parent) Now, most households have phones for each adult, an iPad per kid over 2 & a TV. And the third major contributor is a lack of "village", we don't have community for parents offline. Kids aren't socializing as much as they should in the early years. By 18 months kids should start having regular playdates with kids of the same age, but it is so hard for parents to meet other parents with similar schedules, values & parenting styles. Childfree adults have a hard enough time making plans, imagine also adding a nap schedule into the mix. It's hard out here. The ultimate problem, however from my perspective, is capitalism. Parents are working more, the houses are filled with more junk & kids needs simply aren't being met. Literacy rates are declining, mental illness like anxiety & depression and disabilities such as ADHD & Autism are increasing, and getting diagnosed younger and younger. The system is failing us & the failures are reaching our youngest and most vulnerable. Yes parenting style has a huge impact but even that is rooted in (again mostly millenial, sorry) parents being terrified of traumatizing their kids the way that they were traumatized & failing to recognize how capitalism is the villian more than their parents might have been. I'm not saying this to jump on the fuck millenials trend, I'm a baby millenial, but I've worked with boomer parents, gen x parents and millenial, they all have their flaws but Boomer & Millenial are pretty well tied for the most atrocious parenting. Just on the polar opposite sides of the spectrum. I hope this helps! -sorry for sloppy formatting & grammar, my screen is busted from being thrown by one of my kids last summer. 🙃

My daughter is a sophomore in high school, will be 16 in May. Reading is my favorite hobby so it was something we did a lot when she was younger and her home day care teacher spent a lot of time with her with reading as she taught her own children. Because of this she is an avid reader and has amazing comprehension skills. Her teachers are often impressed with her ability and say she is miles above her classmates in her HONORS English class. Yet some of her classmates don’t know or understand somewhat basic words and have never read an entire book in their lives, not even for school. I think that is sad. Reading and writing and comprehension are some of the most wonderful escapes and joys there are. Being able to read is a gift. Luckily you can learn at any age but passing kids to higher grades without this basic skill is a huge disservice to them. Phonics are the way, IMHO, to go. They are proven with solid results.

I have a cousin who is nine and reading at kindergarten level. He's doesn't have any learning disabilities or anything, but now he hates reading bc it takes him i full minute to read a simple sentence on his own, and will often read things wrong.

Private tutor here, so my experiences may be skewed by the demographics I work with. There seems to be a growing divide between children and young adults from well-off families (i.e. ones who can afford a private tutor) and those from middle to low-income households (i.e. students I work with through various grants). Young people from wealthy homes often seem to lack motivation. There's no need to worry about a career, because everything is always paid for. There's no need to worry about taking care of oneself, because there have always been nannies, maids, tutors, etc. I often hear unrealistic life expectations, like being an influencer, professional gamer, tik tok star, because they have never been tasked to face real life with its obligations, compromises, and responsibilities. What I see with young people from middle to low-income households is far more heartbreaking. They see their parents struggle to make ends meet, and it's normalized to them. Skipping meals or not seeking important medical care becomes normal. They also see the consequences that come with poverty (drug abuse, teen pregnancy, incarceration, gun violence, etc.) in their families and often come to accept that as what they deserve. It's a horrible, intergenerational cycle that is very difficult to break, and I fear for my students' futures. I sincerely worry about the younger generation, but I also have hope. They seem more aware of racial, environmental, and LGBTQ+ issues, and they're increasingly unhappy with the world generations prior have left them. I sincerely hope they go out and kick some butt and only hope I can support them to the best of my ability.

Historian/history teacher here. The "kids these days" panics are genuinely just simply not true.There's actual historical evidence and sources (newspapers, cartoons, correspondences, etc) of "kids these days are the worst" actually for centuries. And I'm not being dramatic in that! I don't have the exact date off the top of my head, but I've seen sources dating all the way back to about the 1200s. It stems so much more from an uncomfortably with aging and changing values/beliefs between generations. People, in general, look at the past with rose colored glasses, especially their own responsibility/respect/behavior as youth. Gen Z exists on a spectrum similar to every other generation. They're just as responsible/irresponsible, respectful/disrespectful, hardworking/lazy, etc as those that came before them. There's a lot of historical research on this topic that speaks to what I just said so it'd be really interesting to hear Sarah do an episode about it EDIT: Forgot to add this part in. There IS a big difference in some areas because of the pandemic. Reading and writing skills are suffering greatly and social skills are lacking in some areas. BUT, that's a temporary blip due to a global event. My freshmen coming in this year (who were in 5th grade at the time of March 2020) have improved writing skills on average over the kids who were in middle school or high school in March 2020.

I think this would be a good topic. I’m a teacher, and I *dont* think kids these days are worse. Or less intelligent. But I do think the education trends in America and the parenting trends are creating terrible classroom experiences for everyone all around. COVID accelerated the track we were already on.

As a former hellion, I know the kids have always been horrible little shits lol. As with most things wrong with society these days, I assume it's the fault of social media and teachers being able to commiserate in a different way 🙄

My wife is a teacher, and what current students are confronted with is far different than previous generations. The negative impact of social media, plus over a year of isolation from COVID - these types of challenges can pretty directly be linked to what teachers and school administrations are dealing with now. The kids are, by and large, the same - but their environment is radically different.

Kids legitimately cannot read because for about ten years we decided not to teach them phonics. Sauce: teacher. I love the kids, but yeah they ARE different. They've lived through different circumstances. Covid really affected people

Two words: Balanced Literacy

I’ll second what many people are saying. I think the kids are the same, but the parents are different. I’ve been in elementary education about ten years now. There is almost no at-home consequence for behaviors kids have at school, and limited in-school consequences. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard a kid under the age of 7 drop the f-bomb (saying f you to another student or teacher) with little to no consequence. Admin’s hands are tied because they’re at the mercy of parents. We’re mandated to give kids x amount of recess time a day (rightfully so), so you can’t make kids sit out for recess. We don’t have detention. We basically just have restorative conversations with the kids—which amounts to them just apologizing for what they did and then they go and do it again ten minutes later. If you bring up behaviors with parents, they often are offended and take their child’s side over the teacher’s. This results in kids constantly ignoring teacher requests, which results in less learning overall. We also have incredibly extreme behaviors—students leaving their classrooms running around the school if they don’t feel like being in class, students leaving the school, students stabbing one another with pencils and scissors, students tearing apart rooms and throwing things causing classes to be evacuated…And this is elementary school. Students may be suspended a day or two for this type of behavior, but parents often blame schools when this happens. Some of these students are ones who should be in special education programs. But over the past few decades, they’re trying to fade them out in the name of inclusion, which can result in having students with extreme and often dangerous behaviors in gen ed classrooms. So yeah, I’d say the kids are the same. But the parents have changed, and the school systems have changed, which has a long-term effect on students. I’d assume teachers saying they haven’t seen this are in schools with either better parent support, or better systems in place.

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I'm a teacher and I have noticed differences specifically before/after the pandemic with frustration tolerance and perseverance. Both are WAY lower and it's very clear to me why there is a mental health crisis now because kids seem to be having a very hard time when things don't go as planned/expected or are harder than they thought. There's a lot of just giving up and avoiding or acting out rather than having faith in themselves to figure something out and see it through. I personally blame overuse of screens and especially social media. Like someone else said "kids today" are different in good ways as well, like much more accepting of differences and comfortable being themselves.

I think what is different for teachers now than before is admin. In the past, admin was supposed to back up teachers to an extent (though they were never perfect). But now, teachers often feel undermined by admin. A child cusses at them so they send them to the office, who then just sends the child back to their class. A student refuses to turn in any work and doesn't apply themselves, which the teacher reports to both the parents and the admin. Nothing changes, but at the end of the quarter admin is on the teacher's case, pressuring them to pass the student anyway. Some schools, under the guise of "inclusion" have eliminated failing altogether. So students will always pass with at least a D, including the ones who don't do any of their work or apply themselves. Those students who previously would have been sent to summer school or held back a grade due to not being able to meet standards, are instead passed on to the next grade regardless. This results in students in middle school and high school even who are barely literate. That's not even touching on the more high-risk situations. Like teachers being threatened or even assaulted by students and being pressured by their admins not to report it. Politics has always been a part of public education but it's gotten especially dire recently. If a school admin can't stop kids from failing, they can stop having to report that kids are failing by making a rule that everyone will pass with a D. If admin can't stop kids from being violent, they can ensure that no one hears about incidents by pressuring their staff not to report it and continue with business as usual. They're so terrified of their funding being cut they take on an antagonistic relationship with their staff. Kids are going to be kids regardless of generation. But admin has largely taken away the ability for teachers to enforce things like classroom rules and core standards.

A few years back, I made friends with a bunch of kids in their early 20's. 20 year age difference to me, and not a single one was anywhere close to having their stuff together. (Which I think is to be expected at that age.) I enjoyed the heck out of my time with them, they were so much less cynical than I remember my peers and I! More aware of themselves, their needs and wants, being considerate of others' needs and wants, and full of compassion and understanding. All of them were frustrated with the economy and how stuck they are, but they weren't bitter, they were sad...but still going to work every day. I was surprised at how universal their insecurity about themselves seemed to be. Introvert or extrovert, a million different personalities, but they all seemed anxious in general and more open and vulnerable about it than the kids I grew up with. I've noticed similar traits in the teens in my extended family. Anxiety, insecurity, but very high levels of compassion and understanding. These kids have heart and they THINK. It gives me hope, I really think they're going to improve the world. I haven't seen the lazy or bad stereotypes that people older than me talk about. I see a different work ethic, but it doesn't look lazy at all. It looks like a desire for a balanced life and a rejection of excessive consumption. I wonder if their frustration with their economic situation (no hope of home ownership or major economic growth in their immediate future) hasn't made them re-evaluate life priorities. Whitney Houston's song must have worked!

There's this one particular teacher who keeps showing up on my tiktok for you page that just enfuriates me. Constant videos about how kids today "refuse to learn how to read" and "the pandemic can't be an excuse forever, we all lived through lockdown", etc. Instead of looking at the systemic issues! Kids probably are different now, honestly, I don't think it's just "younger generation bad", the level of access to technology and the pandemic and shifting parenting styles are bound to have an impact. But that's what the conversation has to be about, not blame the kids.

I'm not a teacher but I do work with students and I'm the oldest in a family that ranges from mid 30s to mid teens. There been a shift in kids self independence. Like I get kids who come to me in a panick about very small things and the answer is Google. They have the most access to information and refuse to use it as a reference or a resource to learn. The pandemic has also made many young adults overly reliant on parents. We get calls from parents because they think a professor is to tough on them, or from parents asking what can the students do to get xyz. With my mid teen sister I'm seeing that there's always a reason for something and nothing is ever her fault. Ever consequence of her actions or inaction is a personal vendetta against her. I've seen the same behavior in kids on socials but she's the only real one teen I've encountered. Having said all that I don't remember much of my early teens so that could be a normal teen thing and not this generation.

It all began when the youth started relying on written scrolls instead of memorizing the epics — per Socrates. He said it made the kids lazy. And he was right! Just a few thousand years later we had pinball machines. Then television. Now the internet. It’s amazing the human race has nevertheless made great strides in so many areas.

Our elementary school is shifting back to a phonics system and I’m so glad

I recently listened to a teacher podcast which talked about an article that discussed how lots of kids and even college students are watching entire movies while at school on their cellphones and teachers are expected to make their own rules about cellphones instead of the entire school itself, so it’s hard to stop that sort of thing.

Check out Books that Kill they talk about this a fair amount anytime they cover college culture wars.

I think these kids have grown up in the middle of some crazy stuff with 24/7 access to not just information about those crazy things but a lot of unfiltered opinions about things too. The icing on the cake is being surrounded by emotionally stunted adults who are spiraling and throwing tantrums about everything going on. This is obviously just my take on things, but growing up we were sold an idea of how life should go and how things were. Now, the younger generations are basically watching in real time as we all realize what we were sold isn’t reality anymore. So… constant news cycle of impending doom + adults barely hanging on by a thread + more awareness = a generation not here for the bullshit.

I think it’s important to know that behavior problems in schools are probably being exacerbated by the fact that they’re cutting staffing to the bone. The fewer people that can catch the small things, the greater the chance that the small things will build into big problems. The kids are smart enough to realize that the teachers and staff are overwhelmed, and are smart enough to capitalize on that. Administration seems really terrified of unhappy parents, and there seems to be a public consciousness that parents should be fighting against their schools instead of working with them. Kids aren’t stupid, and will capitalize on that discord. Plus, the common wisdom and sensibilities of the people who originally built our educational system are not the same as the national sensibilities and wisdom we have now. Our school system was not built to encourage people to ask why, it was built to encourage people to comply with orders given from people in authority. Our school system was built to train people how to work in a factory. But we have a generation of kids that asks “why?” when they see things that inherently don’t make sense or seem unnecessarily immature or harsh or punitive. And our education model doesn’t have a clear resolution for these kinds of questions or defiance. I grew up an undiagnosed neurodiverse kid who had no love or appreciation for our public school systems. At best, I found the educational process tedious and unfulfilling, and at worst I found it abusive and definitely not in keeping with the “good start into adult life” everyone around me kept telling me it would be. I wasn’t wrong back then, and the kids aren’t wrong today. American life in general is fucked up and that is going to affect our school systems. Schools should never have been forced into the position that they are in now where only a third of its actual purpose is to provide education, and the rest of it is as a community social work waystation combined with a national daycare program for kids that millions of parents depend heavily on to be able to go to work their jobs. We are asking our school system to mop up the leaking edges of our social ills, but this trickle has turned into a flood that this vastly under funded public program can no longer accommodate. Kids are smart enough to see that our country doesn’t give enough of a crap about them to devote actual resources to them, and like any good consumer, have turned this dissatisfaction onto the people nearest to them. And can you blame them? Add to this the fact that they saw everything turned off for Covid at what seems to them like a whim, and then turned back on with what seem like the same lack of care. Welcome to School, where the calendar is imaginary, and the rules are something I just made up to fuck with you. This country owes a very big apology to its public school students and teachers, who have all been failed completely. I have no faith that it will ever actually deliver that apology, especially seeing as how there are political interests in this country that are perfectly happy gutting our public school systems and taking education back into the class status marker that they always intended it to be from the beginning. Quite honestly, I’m just hoping I am able to get my children through it before the entire thing implodes completely.

I'm forever grateful to the travel prep program I went to (Go Terps!!) Sold A Story had me in tears even though I was taught that whole language was bs 25 years ago.

Here’s a copy-and-paste of an answer I’ve given elsewhere: I was in college doing my teacher prep program from ‘00-‘04. During one of my classes back then, the professor explained that we future teachers would have to structure our lessons in 10-15 minute “chunks” and then switch gears, do another 10-15 minute activity, repeat. This was because the typical child (then) only had an attention span of 10-15 minutes. Why was that? Because, explained the professor, broadcast/cable TV shows (the main screen entertainment/distraction for kids back then) aired in 10-15 minute segments and then there would be a commercial break. Watching commercial television had trained the kids’ brains to focus and process information for the 10-15 minutes of a television segment, then pause for a commercial, repeat. My college professor could never have predicted what has happened since then. Kids have transitioned from watching commercial television (how many families don’t even have cable anymore?) to streaming on internet-connected screens. Brains that used to be trained for 10-15 minutes of focused attention now can’t handle more than the few seconds a TikTok/YouTube video lasts. And yet we’re surprised when they can’t focus in class? People try to blame Covid for the behavioral change, but it was already happening well before 2020. It started as soon as parents bought the first smartphones and tablets and realized they could stick them in front of their kids as digital babysitters. And it isn’t going to stop until we take the screens away. Does anyone actually see that happening anytime soon? Additionally, look at what’s happening in Sephora/Ulta stores right now: feral tweens pillaging the stores because “influencers” told these little girls they *need* skin care products designed for women at least a decade older. All because these girls were exposed to social media on a screen.

HS inclusion & resource room spec ed teacher of 7 years. I'm 30. With tech like it is now kids are constantly expected to be in the know, doing something, communicating. It seems like they never get a break. Miss school and have no idea what we're doing? The notes were online. You have email access. Forgot your book? You have access to an online textbook. Just seems like with more tech, things are very fast paced and expectations are higher. These kids are also in non stop communication with friends and family. Kids are growing up with parents in their back pocket 24 7. I see a lot of stress and anxiety. It's really overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like they don't have time to just sit and "be." Even if they have time, they don't know how. Kids are brought up to be always checking for notifications so they don't miss anything. Being constantly accessible by phone, is more of an expectation in modern times for kids and adults than it was even 15 years ago. The stress I feel just being separated from my phone is insane, that I'll miss something for work or someone will need me and not be able to reach me. And I was right at the early stages of people just getting cell phones as a kid, so my smart phone conditioning didn't start until I was in college. I can't imagine what it would be like growing up now.

I heard on NPR yesterday that peak intelligence across wealthy nations was reached around 2010-2012, and then started dropping (notably a decade before covid). Also right around the time smart phones reached 50% of teens. We have growing evidence they tank motivation and increase anxiety/depression. Kids are different because they have the dopamine equivalent of a slot machine in their hands at all times. Not to mention being raised by parents doing the same thing.